


you can figure out what goes where

by tsimtsum



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Multi, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-22 08:11:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19663327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsimtsum/pseuds/tsimtsum
Summary: what happens after.





	you can figure out what goes where

**Author's Note:**

> One instance of homophobic language, references to physical abuse by a parent, and spoilers for season 3.
> 
> Title from New House by Rex Orange County.

Steve leaves the hospital after twenty-nine days, flanked by his parents, who had gathered the bouquets of flowers and teddy bears into clear plastic bags that they tuck into the backseat beside him. At home, his bedroom is cleaner than he left it when he ran out the door with less than twenty minutes before his shift started. There’s a new frame on the wall opposite his bed. His Hawkins Medal of Honor, awarded by Mayor Pro Tem Ellen Lightwood, who had arrived in his hospital room with a reporter and a speech written on a piece of notebook paper. It’s the city’s highest honor for civilians, she had told him, and he threw up after they left. 

To explain his injuries, the government agents had invented a story about Steve running back into the mall to help get people out and being crushed by the storefront gate of The Gap in the process. He had to repeat that story to policemen and building inspectors and doctors and nurses. Sometimes he starts to imagine that the story is the truth, and when he closes his eyes he feels the heat from the fireworks as heat from the flames overtaking racks of clothes, the pain of being punched fifty times that screams from his stomach accompanied by the tangible weight of being trapped and out of options. 

Will visits him on his second day at home. In the hospital, Steve had read books on desert wildlife and Will had used a brand-new pack of colored pencils to copy the pictures. He sits on a chair next to Steve’s bed and folds one foot under his thigh. He stares at the Medal of Honor. 

“They gave one of those to Hopper,” he says. “Well, actually, it was called the Hero’s Medal, I think. El didn’t want to keep it, so it’s at the police station now.”

Steve closes his eyes and runs his tongue along the back of his teeth. His duvet seems heavier on his body. He missed the funerals, but his parents attended all thirty. They told him details that unraveled from individual services and wove together into a communal picture of mourning. Beverly Crowe’s granddaughter playing the violin. The scattering of David Machinski’s ashes over his farmland. The flower arrangements for the Brenory family that cost over two thousand dollars. Steve had listened to these descriptions without asking for more information, allowing his parents to tell him what they thought he wanted to hear. 

Robin visits after four days, lying across the foot of his bed and pulling on her fingers until the knuckles pop. They don’t say anything until she leaves, shifting her weight in his doorway and holding her lower lip between her teeth. 

“I don’t know how you all did it last time,” she says. “After it was over.”

“The last two times, actually,” he says. They watch each other for another moment, and then she leaves. 

His parents keep the air conditioning on high, and an artificial smell permeates the house. After a week, Steve spends most days lying on a deck chair next to the pool. Every morning, his mother uses a net to skim off leaves and bugs before doing laps for thirty minutes. His parents haven’t left Hawkins since he was hospitalized, and he can’t remember the last time he saw either of them for more than a day or two. Sometimes his father will sit next to him and talk for long periods about having the freedom to discover what you want to do with your life. He doesn’t seem to mind that Steve has little to contribute to these conversations, and he never mentions college or minimum wage jobs. 

Steve drives for the first time after two weeks at home. He rolls down all the windows and lets the wind drown out the radio. He speeds when he sees other cars and slows to a crawl when he’s alone. He drives until the woods become fields and keeps driving when they become woods again. When he hits the state line, he stops. Pulls over and rests his head against the steering wheel. He touches his face and feels a dampness that he can’t distinguish as sweat or tears. He breathes.

Arriving back in Hawkins, Steve stops outside the Holy Oak Cemetery, where seventeen of the thirty have been buried. He parks at the gate and stares at the perfect green grass and the twisted trunks that rise between every few rows of graves. Tire marks show how popular this place has been in the past few weeks, and while Steve is sitting there, a blue pickup pulls up behind him. He jams his keys back into the ignition and takes a sharp turn away from the gates. His face is wet again.

***

Steve didn’t normally open his windows until April, but tonight, with the snowbanks still piled over the pool cover, he breathes in cold air and watches Billy Hargrove smoke from across the room. They never talked afterward, which was okay with Steve. He rests one hand on his stomach and feels the rhythm of his breathing. The glowing end of Billy’s cigarette flares to life and diminishes. The smoke drifts out the window. 

“I’m thinking about getting a job,” Billy says. Steve jumps, visibly, and he catches Billy’s smile before he turns his head to rest his face against the window frame. Steve swallows, his mouth still sticky.

“Yeah? Where at?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. Just need to start making money. Financial independence, you know? Or,” Billy’s eyes track the room without looking at Steve. “I guess you don’t know.” Steve feels the familiar tightness in his shoulders, the clenching around his throat that appears when people make assumptions because he has a big house and a nice car. 

“No, um, I’m probably going to get a job, too,” he says. Billy meets his eyes, taking another drag from his cigarette. 

“What do you need a job for, Princess?” he asks. “Allowance not cutting it anymore?” A blush rises hot over Steve’s chest, travels up to his ears.

“I mean, I gotta do something. I’m not going to school next year, so,” he scratches his arm, “I guess I’ll work for my dad for a little bit but that’s not forever, you know?”

“Guess not,” says Billy. He puts the cigarette out against the glass and leaves the butt smoldering on the windowsill as he walks back to the bed. He finds his briefs under Steve’s pants and pulls them on. He’s got a mark shaped like Steve’s mouth on the inside of his thigh. If anyone sees it in the locker room tomorrow, they’ll assume it’s from a girl and Steve will listen to Billy make up a story about the latest notch in his belt. It might not be entirely untrue. Steve knows that Billy’s seen girls since he started this thing with Steve a month ago. Whatever their thing is, it’s not exclusive, and Steve has seen some girls, too. Last weekend Maureen Jordan blew him in her bedroom during the party she threw while her parents were on a cruise in the Bahamas. He hasn’t spoken to her since. 

Billy finishes buttoning his jeans and pulls on a jacket over his shirt. He tugs on his boots at the door. “See ya, Harrington.” And he’s gone.

***

School starts and Robin still comes over every day, but only in the evenings, carrying her clarinet case after jazz band. Steve picks her up sometimes, when her brother has their car, and she eats dinner with him and his parents. He knows that his parents think they’re dating, but now that Steve is out of school and because he supposedly saved a lot of lives a couple months ago, they let him close his bedroom door and don’t check in before they go to sleep. Robin sprawls out over his bed and does her homework while Steve looks through her college booklets on the floor. She wants to go to a school with a good music program, and he thinks about how last year he had no idea what he was looking for in a school, other than big and far away from Hawkins. 

Robin’s family subscribes to The New York Times, and sometimes she brings a copy in her backpack and reads him articles about perestroika and the Walker brothers. Steve never used to talk about the news, not even with Nancy or Billy, and he struggles to keep up with Robin’s references to people and events that he’s never heard of before. She laughs and throws a pillow at his head when he mixes up Gorbachev and Gosplan, but then she explains it without condescension. Sometimes they talk about their own Russian drama, when it’s late and the only sound in the house is the hum of air conditioning chasing away the fading summer. Halfway into September Steve tells her that he used to get high three or four times a week, during that distant period between graduation and the 4th, when his future yawned into a void ahead of him. He’d found his stuff where he left it, in a sock at the bottom of his drawer, but he threw it out when he took the garbage to the street a few days later. He hasn’t touched anything since, not even beer.

“I think about Dustin and Erica, having to deal with us down there when we were high off our asses,” he tells her. “It actually makes me sick. And I’ve been throwing up enough recently.” Robin reaches out to touch the scar below the corner of his mouth. 

“I know,” she says. 

***

After the first time, when Steve presses his cheek against the fogged-up glass in the backseat of the Camaro, panting into the silence, Billy touches the scar along his hairline. Steve flinches, and Billy jerks away, pressing himself against the opposite door. 

“Sorry,” Billy says, and the silence lasts so long that Steve thinks he isn’t going to say anything else. “It won’t happen again.” Steve doesn’t know if he’s apologizing for now or before, but he shrugs and drags a hand through the sweaty tangles of his hair.

“Yeah, well, next time I’ll beat your ass,” he says. Billy snorts, and hides it with a cough. Steve rubs the heels of his hands against his eyes.

***

Steve runs into Mike and Mrs. Wheeler at the supermarket. Their shopping cart is for a family of five, overflowing with cereal boxes and canned vegetables. Steve’s basket holds a loaf of bread and a bag of Doritos. His dad left the night before on a business trip and his mom flew out two days before that for a charity event in New York. The Wheelers stare at his food before they look up at him.

“Hey Steve,” says Mike, before his mother steamrolls over him with questions about how Steve’s doing and what his plans are now. Steve pinches his expression into what feels like a smile and looks at the linoleum floor. He tries to remember that Mrs. Wheeler doesn’t know because no one knows, even though two of her kids were there that night. When he realizes that she’s stopped talking, he looks up and finds her looking at him the same way Joyce Byers looked at him when she saw him sitting on the back of an ambulance two months ago. Steve wonders if Mrs. Wheeler does know, even if she doesn’t really.

“Do you want to come over for dinner, Steve?” Mrs. Wheeler asks. “It’s spaghetti night.”

Three hours later Steve arrives at the Wheelers’ house with a bottle of wine that he took from the cellar and hopes is really expensive. He doesn’t look at Nancy’s window as he walks up the driveway and rings the doorbell. Mr. Wheeler opens the door after several moments of Steve tugging at the bottom of his jacket and trying to shape his face into something neutral. He stares at Steve for a long beat.

“Can I help you, son?” he asks.

“Oh, um, your – Mrs. Wheeler, she um,” Steve thrusts out the bottle of wine and smiles in a way that he hopes is charming and not manic. Mike appears in the hallway and rescues Steve, reminding his dad that his mom told him she had invited Steve over. Mike also takes the bottle of wine and disappears into the kitchen, Steve moving to follow him and running into Nancy and Jonathan coming down the stairs. They all stop and stare at each other while Mr. Wheeler shuffles past.

“Hi Steve,” says Nancy. She’s holding Jonathan’s hand. “You look really good.” Steve shrugs. The last time they saw him he had tubes connecting him to eight different machines and the time before that his eye was almost popping out of his face. He doesn’t think it’s hard to look better than that. They have their own scars, he knows, tiny visible ones and others that are larger, unseen.

“I hear you’re leaving town,” he says to Jonathan. Will had told him the week before, floating with Dustin in the Harringtons' pool while Steve watched from a deck chair. Jonathan crooks his mouth into a half smile.

“Yeah, my mom really wants us to go,” he says. “She thinks that three times is enough.” Steve saw Joyce crying in a hospital hallway, a week after it all happened. Her injuries were minor, but everyone who had been underground was kept there for longer than necessary. After his surgeries, Steve spent most of his time talking to government employees who recorded him and took pages of notes. He had frozen when he saw her crying, but before he could do anything the man called Murray walked out of his own room and folded her into a hug. Swallowing hard, Steve had turned around and walked back the way he came.

“Hard to believe there’s anything outside Hawkins,” he tells Jonathan, who shrugs again.

“I guess we’ll find out,” he says. Then Mrs. Wheeler is calling them all for dinner, and Steve eats until he can’t force down any more.

***

Steve closes his eyes when he feels Billy’s fingers slip through his hair. Billy’s chest is warm against the side of his face, and he runs his own hand along Billy’s side without thinking. 

“Pass me my jeans, Harrington,” Billy says. “I need a smoke.”

“You’re not lighting up this close to my hair,” Steve says, though he doesn’t want Billy to move. “You’ll catch it on fire.” Billy laughs, quiet, even with no one else in the house to hear it.

“Nah, I’m always real careful with you, pretty boy,” he says, but he doesn’t move. Steve feels a warm pressure against the top of his head, wet. He closes his eyes again. 

“Where will you go after you graduate?” he asks. “Back to California?” Billy hums into the silence and traces a pattern against the back of Steve’s neck. 

“Maybe,” he says. “Nothing really to go back to, but I guess it’s better than anywhere else. Definitely a city though. Fuck if I’m ever living in the middle of fucking nowhere ever again.” Steve draws himself up onto his elbow and looks into Billy’s face. He’s staring at the ceiling.

“Would I like it in California?” he asks. Billy glances at him.

“Don’t tell me you’re thinking about leaving Hawkins,” he says. Steve shrugs. “No way. You’re getting married here, probably at the center of town, and you’re having two kids, and your son will play basketball and your daughter will be a cheerleader. And then they’re both getting married here and the Harrington line will go on and on and on.”

“Fuck off,” says Steve, pushing away from Billy and lying against his own pillow. “This isn’t the rest of my life.”

“Oh, come on, Princess, I’m just messing with you.” Billy rolls over and brushes his thumb across Steve’s nipple, and Steve’s breath catches. He looks away, determined to stay annoyed, but Billy straddles him and leans down until his lips are almost touching Steve’s. “I just can’t imagine you outside of the small-town Midwest. You’d need someone to help you get settled in California.” Steve can’t stop himself from grinning.

“Yeah? Are you volunteering?”

“Maybe.” Billy licks into his mouth, and this is new, the kissing, but Steve pushes both hands into Billy’s hair as he feels Billy settle on top of him, and he licks the space behind Billy’s teeth and breaks away to suck a bruise beneath his jaw. The sound of their breathing grows louder and louder until Steve moans, desperate, and the next part is becoming more and more familiar and he lets himself fall into it, and he thinks he could keep doing this forever.

***

Robin shows up at his house one afternoon with both their applications for Family Video already filled out. She tells him that she saw the Now Hiring sign in the door, and she makes Steve dig out a copy of his resume that he typed up with his application paperwork last year. After he gets the job he starts working there every day, and sometimes he stays from open to close, waiting through the quiet mornings until Robin shows up for her shift, when they throw crumpled paper at each other as they restock the shelves and help customers find the titles they’re looking for. 

When it’s slow, Robin will pull out her music theory homework or a Russian novel because she’s trying to learn, and Steve will chew on a pencil as he agonizes over the essay he tried to write a year ago. Robin will watch him sometimes, without comment, except to pull the pencil out of his mouth to correct his grammar. Hawkins High students come in a lot, sometimes people Robin knows and sometimes people that Steve used to hang out with. They look at him and Robin, the used-to-be-most-popular-guy-in-the-school and the random girl who always has an instrument case with her, and they all assume that they’re together now. Steve knows what they're thinking, but he doesn’t care. He’s never been friends with a girl, and maybe it’s because high school is over or maybe it’s because of Robin, but sometimes he feels relaxed in a way that he’s never felt before. He didn’t realize how tiring it had been, thinking all the time about how other people saw him, but he actually feels lighter sometimes when he’s seeing a movie with Robin that Tommy would have called a pussy flick or reading a book behind the counter of Family Video and not caring who sees him. 

He’s reading a biography of Emmeline Pankhurst when Tammy Thompson walks through the door, her hair lighter and her heels higher than he remembers. They talk for a while, about Nashville, where Tammy lives now. She cuts hair and takes her guitar to the millions of open mic nights and she’s trying to get time in a recording studio. She’s home visiting her parents for a few days, and she lingers in the romantic movie section before moving to the comedies. When Robin walks in for her shift, she stops in the doorway and stares, her eyes flicking between Tammy and Steve, but soon she and Tammy are talking, too. After Tammy leaves with an armful of movies, Steve stares at Robin, grinning, his eyes wide and suggestive, until she slaps his arm.

“Knock it off, I don’t even like her anymore.”

“Oh, really? Those weren’t heart eyes that I saw when you walked in the door?” Steve leans forward, chin in his hand, and she knocks his arm out from under him, but she’s laughing.

“Yes, really. She was just, like, a beginner’s-level crush. Actually,” Robin pauses, knocking her fingers against her mouth.

“Actually? Actually what?”

“Well, I mean, there’s a girl in orchestra, and her name is Joanna, and she’s really pretty, and she plays the bass, which is like, badass, and…” And Steve spends the rest of their shift pestering Robin for more details and demanding to know when she’s going to ask Joanna on a date.

***

Steve and Billy first go to Starcourt Mall less than a week after it opens, when it’s packed and there’s no place to sit down, and everyone’s too busy looking at the shops and restaurants to pay attention to anyone else. They buy ice cream cones and eat them while they watch a Jazzercise class, staring past the posters in the windows that advertise free classes for the first week.

“Bet you won’t try it out,” Steve says, watching the dark-haired instructor bend to the floor. 

“Nice try,” Billy snorts, “so someone can call me a faggot? I don’t think so.”

“Well maybe I’ll try it,” Steve says, shifting his weight to one foot. 

“No, you won’t,” Billy says, turning to lean against the rail and scan the lower floor. He’s right, and Steve turns with him, his eyes lingering on the instructor’s arms. “How fucking typical that Hawkins would lose their shit over a couple of stores and a food court,” Billy says, biting into the cone. “Christ, I think some of these people might die from excitement.” Steve licks his own cone, a chocolate and vanilla swirl, and nods without saying anything, feeling both superior and also unable to comment. A new mall is kind of exciting, even if it’s also stupid, but he knows better than to say that to Billy.

“Hi Steve,” Maggie Glenhauer is coming up the escalator with a group of friends who all giggle to one another when they see Steve and Billy.

“Oh, hi Maggie,” says Steve. They’d had sex a couple nights ago after Maggie had come over to work on an English project with him. She’s wearing a yellow sweater and drinking an orange smoothie. She smiles at him. 

“My parents are going to my mom’s cousin’s wedding tomorrow,” she says. “You should come over. I think we need some more practice before our presentation.” One of her friends has to cover her mouth to stop herself from laughing. Steve can feel Billy standing just outside his peripheral vision.

“Uh, sounds good,” he says. “Is seven okay?”

“Seven is perfect.” She leaves, her friends following, and Steve stares after them until Billy coughs.

“Fucking a sophomore? Real classy, Harrington.”

“She’s a junior, and you know that.” He licks up the ice cream that has melted over his fingers, meeting Billy’s eyes. He’d heard Jessica Davids telling everyone about the amazing sex she’d had with Billy the night before. He doesn’t have shit to explain.

“I bet I’m better in bed than her,” says Billy, low, and Steve rolls his eyes.

“I bet I’m better in bed than Jessica Davids.” Billy just smirks at him. 

“What do you think?”

***

Steve is unlocking the door to Family Video in late October when he sees Max for the first time in three months. She’s biking past on the sidewalk, and she stops to stare at him.

“Hey,” he says, after what might be a minute or more.

“Hey,” she says. They watch each other. Steve reminds himself that she looks nothing like Billy. They’re not technically related. Her knuckles are white where she’s gripping the handlebars.

“Don’t you have school today?” he asks.

“I skip sometimes,” she says. “I used to skip with Will, but he’s gone now, so.”

“Yeah, right.” Will had showed up at his house the day before he left, and he floated in Steve’s pool until well after midnight. Steve had driven him home, putting his bike in the back seat of his car, because he remembered what happened two years ago and the Byerses were so close to leaving. Nothing happened, and the Byers family left, and Hawkins was now four people smaller. “Do you want to come in?” Steve asks. “I’m just opening up. We don’t actually open for another thirty minutes, and no one really comes in before noon.” Max looks at him for so long that he thinks she’s going to say no, but then she shrugs and leaves her bike outside. 

She sits on the counter while he opens a new shipment of movies and sets up a cardboard stand advertisement for The Mummy. He feels her watching him, but he doesn’t try to start a conversation and neither does she. She sits there all morning, and the only customers are Mrs. Geralds returning Pinocchio and Matthew McGill renting Planet of the Apes. At lunchtime Steve hands her a ten and tells her she can get something from the Burger King across the street. She asks him if he wants anything and he shrugs, says she can pick for him. He’s working on his college essay when she gets back. He accepts his Whopper and doesn’t ask for the change. She resumes her spot on the counter, biting into her own burger. 

“What are you working on?” she asks. He spreads out a napkin to protect his paper.

“College essay.” It’s the first time he’s told anyone other than Robin that he’s re-applying.

“You want to go to college?” 

“Not sure what else there is to do,” he says with a shrug. She takes another bite from her burger.

“You could keep working here.” 

“Please don’t say that,” he says, unwrapping his sandwich and watching a glob of ketchup fall onto the counter. “It’s too depressing to think about.” Max finishes her burger and tosses the crumpled wrapper into the trash, landing it from ten feet away. Steve thinks that they’ve returned to their silence, but then she speaks again, her voice pitched higher than before.

“I never told anyone, you know,” she says. “Not even when we knew he was the host. Not even when the government people were asking me all those questions about him.” Steve wipes his mouth with his napkin and crushes it in his hand, the flimsy material shredding between his fingers.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “I mean, thank you, but you shouldn’t lie to those people. It’s not worth it.”

“I promised you I wouldn’t. I promised both of you. It was worth it,” Max says. Steve stares at his hands. He tries to thank her again, but he can’t open his mouth. “He wouldn’t have wanted anyone to know,” she says. Steve doesn’t say anything to that because he has no way of contradicting it. 

***

They were always quieter at Billy’s, even tonight, when Max was at the Sinclairs’ and Billy’s dad was with Susan at a casino in Michigan. There was always a risk, and it hung between them, creating a space even when they were as close as they could be, far closer than Steve had ever been with another guy. Billy makes noises, muffled by his pillow, that burrow into Steve’s chest, behind his ribs, and when they hold each other afterward, skin sticky and sweaty in this too-hot room, each trying to devour the other, Steve feels like his lungs are expanding to an impossible size even as he struggles to breathe. When he finally breaks away, his heart still throbbing so loudly that he thinks he can hear it, he finds Billy staring at him with a look he has never seen before.

“What?” he asks, his voice cracking on the whisper. Billy has shoved one leg between Steve’s, and Steve is using Billy’s bicep as a pillow. Their stomachs brush with every inhale. 

“You’re beautiful,” says Billy, quiet, so quiet, and Steve can hear himself swallow. Billy calls Steve princess and pretty boy, makes fun of his hair routine and his outfits, but he has never called Steve beautiful. He’s never complimented his appearance, except for the time he said that Steve actually didn’t look completely stupid in his pink polo. Steve brushes his thumb across Billy’s face, and Billy closes his eyes as Steve traces Billy’s eyelashes. Steve looks at Billy, the long lines and hard muscles, the fading bruises from the last time Billy’s dad threw him into a wall and the fresher bruises from the fight that Billy started before third period a few days ago. When he closes his eyes, they’re not in this tiny room, and they’re not in Hawkins. They’re somewhere else, where there is no one who can hurt them and no one who would want to.

“So are you,” Steve whispers. “Beautiful.” They breathe each other’s air and pretend that there is nothing else to think about, because as long as this moment lasts, there isn’t.

***

Sometimes Robin appears at his house in the middle of the night, and she sits on the floor of his room or he sits in her car in his driveway. Sometimes she cries, or he cries, or they both cry. Sometimes they talk and sometimes they just listen to each other breathe. Two days after Reagan arrives in Switzerland to meet Gorbachev, Robin and Steve are sitting in her car and he’s listening to her talk while she twists her hair through her fingers. 

“I see people, all the time, ordinary people sometimes, but they have a look on their face, or they move their hands like they might be carrying a gun, and I actually can’t breathe, and I have to sit down and close my eyes and the whole time they might be walking over to me, or pulling out the gun, or, or,” she stops, sucking in a breath and resting her face against the window. Steve looks at her profile, the small bump of her nose, and he takes her hand. Her palm is sweaty but he doesn’t let go. “I can’t believe it’s over,” she says at last. “The Russians know about me, and our government knows about me, and I can’t believe that I just get to live a normal life now. I watched actual Russian scientists try to break an opening into another world, and we listened to the song from The fucking Neverending Story while a monster made out of people that I knew ran after us and I can’t keep acting like I’m living in the same world that I woke up in five months ago, Steve. I don’t know how to do it anymore.” Steve holds her hand and cries with her and doesn’t say anything because he’s known about the monsters for longer but he doesn’t feel any wiser with that knowledge.

One month after that night Steve pulls his car into Robin’s driveway while Hawkins sleeps, and he climbs through her window like a different version of him that used to climb into the bedrooms of girls so very long ago. He sits on her bed in a pool of yellow from the streetlight outside, and he tells her about Billy.

“Billy Hargrove and I, we were closer than people thought,” he says. He thought it would be hard to tell her but it’s easy, and every thought that he’s had since the 4th spills out of him like he’s unclogged a drain and he’s powerless to stop the water from rushing through. He tells her about the months of secret hookups and the months since, months spent grieving a boy that everyone thought he hated. 

“I should have told him about what happened last year,” he says, “because then maybe he would have known what happened when he got possessed, and maybe he would have asked for help because I bet he thought he was going crazy and I bet he felt so alone and he must have been so scared.” Steve hiccups through a sob. “And when I hit him with the car I should’ve stopped to get him, even though it wasn’t him and even though he was going to kill Nancy and everyone else too, probably, because it actually was him, and I should have gone down to him when he was fighting El because it was him then, too, and I should have tried harder because it wasn’t enough. Billy died, and Hopper died, and none of it was enough.” 

Robin holds him until he stops crying, until he can’t taste the salt of his tears, until the streetlight flicks off because the sky is streaked pink with the sunrise. Steve looks at Robin, this girl who he woke up in the middle of the night and who is literally holding him together right now. Frizzy curls frame her face and there’s hole right below the collar of her t-shirt. She holds her lower lip between her teeth.

“How are you holding up?” he asks her, and she smiles at him, the tear trails shining on her cheeks.

“Ask me tomorrow.”

***

Billy’s still wearing his whistle when he picks up Steve after his shift. A bus deposits a swarm of people into the neon metropolis of Starcourt at night, and Steve slides into the Camaro’s passenger seat. Billy’s in his red lifeguard shorts and white tank top, the silver whistle gleaming against his chest. He’s smoking out the window. Steve checks that no one is around and grabs Billy by the string of his whistle, pulls him close. 

“Hi,” says Steve. 

“You look fucking ridiculous in that hat,” says Billy, and then they’re kissing, and Billy tastes like chlorine. As they drive to Steve’s house Steve talks about his job, which he hates, and Billy talks about his job, which he loves. They pull into the big driveway filled only by Steve’s car, and Billy’s wrapped around him the second they walk through the front door, his lips on Steve’s collarbones and his hand down Steve’s pants. They trip on the last step, like they always do, and then they’re finally in Steve’s room, and a trail of clothes marks their path to his bed, and Steve could do this a million times and the expression on Billy’s face as Steve opens him up with his hands and his mouth would never get old. His thighs ache when they’re done, and he thinks he can still taste Billy at the back of his throat. He shoves his face into Billy’s neck, licking at the sweat and laughing when Billy grumbles and tries to push him away. 

They kiss until Steve can’t feel his lips, and then he pulls a joint out of his bottom drawer that Billy lights up. They pass it between them, the only light in the darkness, and Steve thinks about how they’re swapping spit even now. He laughs to himself and Billy prods his ribs. 

“What’s so funny, Princess?” he asks, and Steve shrugs. This is his favorite part of any day. When he reaches over to take the joint from Billy, he laces their fingers together and passes the joint to his other hand. He inhales. Billy crosses his ankle over Steve’s. “Karen Wheeler is seriously fucking into me,” he says. Steve nods because he’s heard all about Billy’s middle-aged fan club. “And she’s really hot. Great body. You’d never think she’s got three kids.” Steve frowns at that because Mrs. Wheeler will always be Nancy’s mom, and he doesn’t want to spend too much time thinking about her body. “I’m thinking about fucking her,” Billy says. 

“Seriously?” asks Steve, turning to catch Billy’s eye. Billy shrugs with one shoulder and reaches over to take back the joint. His thumb is rubbing circles against the back of Steve’s hand. 

“Yeah why not,” he takes a long drag and releases the smoke through a tiny pucker of his lips. “If she’s into it. It’d be fun.”

“So what, you’re just going to take her to your house when no one’s home and bring her into your twin bed?”

“It’s good enough for you, isn’t it?” Billy asks, lifting an eyebrow. Steve looks away, pushing all the air out of his chest in a sudden breath. “But, nah, I was thinking of going to the Motel 6.”

“Yeah, real classy, Hargrove.”

“Oh, fuck off.” They finish the joint in silence. Steve doesn’t look at Billy until he feels Billy’s hand running down his side. Billy runs his thumb along Steve’s jaw and presses his fingers against Steve’s lips. Steve sucks his index finger into mouth, and feels it on his tongue, a gentle pressure. Billy gasps, soft, and Steve pulls him on top of him. He can feel Billy everywhere, and as his hand travels down Billy’s stomach he thinks all kinds of things that he can’t say out loud, and he wishes that Billy could hear them anyway. Afterward Billy gets dressed and then he leans over Steve, his hands braced on either side of his head, and presses a kiss to his temple, lingering. 

“See ya, Harrington,” he says on his way out the door.

“Bye, Billy.” And Steve is alone.

***

On a Thursday in March, Max appears at Family Video as Steve’s shift is ending. She comes by sometimes now, when she skips school or on the weekends, and they talk or sit in silence depending on how they’re feeling. Today Steve is tucking a textbook into his backpack. He’s started taking classes at the community college, hoping to catch up on credits if he gets into a four-year school in the fall. He’s thinking about tonight, when he’s planning on going to Hawkins High to see their production of Bye Bye Birdie. Robin is playing in the pit, and he wants to go to the supermarket and buy her flowers before the performance.

Max leans her bike against the window before heading inside. She sits on the counter and watches Steve pack his things. Keith is on the phone in the back, trying to sort out the accidental double shipment of The Empire Strikes Back that they received that morning. Steve has learned that the fluffy bears aren’t in that one.

“How can I help you, Maxine?” he asks, pulling his keys out of the backpack’s front pocket. Max jumps down to join him as he walks out the door. 

“I’m going to visit Billy,” she says. “You should come, too.” Steve pauses with his hand on the door handle. He has to count to ten in his head. Max waits beside him, silent.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Steve says. He forces himself to open the door, and he walks outside and folds his arms across his chest. He closes his eyes and inhales. 

“Look,” says Max, “if you want to leave, we’ll leave. But I think you should at least try.” Steve doesn’t tell her that he has tried, several times, but he’s never been able to make it past the gates. Still, they lift her bike into the back seat, and she flips through radio stations during the eight-minute drive. 

Holy Oak has a new sign, recently installed after a drunk driver crashed into the old one, snapping it in two. The gravel driveway stretches in front of them, and the car rolls to a stop at the gate. They sit there for five minutes, and then another ten. Max looks out her window for a while, not moving, but after twenty minutes she turns in her seat to face Steve. 

“I can get out here, if you want,” she says but Steve shakes his head and presses his foot against the gas. They roll slowly past rows of graves, the gravel crunching under their tires, until they reach the second last row. Bright green grass grows in a thick carpet. Max gets out without saying anything else, and she walks halfway down the row before coming to a stop at a gray headstone. She puts one hand against it and sits down. Steve turns off the car and watches her. They stay there for a long time. The sun is brushing against the tops of the trees in the west when Steve gets out of the car. He walks to her, slowly, reading every headstone that he passes. Each one is inscribed with July 4, 1985. 

When Steve reaches William Hargrove he falls on his knees without meaning to. A flower bouquet lies in front of the headstone, its blooms bright red and yellow. Steve looks at Max.

“Did you put these here?” he asks, but she shakes her head. She’s sitting with her legs crossed, and the sunlight catches on her hair.

“No. And I don’t think it’s Neil or my mom, but there are always flowers here. I don’t know who’s doing it.” Steve lifts them to his nose and breathes in, their scent fading but sweet. He places them back down and runs his fingers through the grass. He stares at the inscription of each letter of Billy’s name until his vision blurs with hot tears that trickle down his face. Max leans against his side, and he doesn’t bother to hide his sobs. They sit like that until Steve loses the feeling in his feet, and he wraps his arm around Max’s shoulder and rests his cheek against the top of her head. She doesn’t comment on the tears sliding into her hair.

When they hear footsteps behind him Steve freezes, digging the fingers of one hand into the soil and frantically trying to blink the blurriness from his eyes. Max rises, shielding him with her body, but then they both turn at the sound of a familiar voice.

It’s Nancy, doing the thing where she smiles but her eyes are sad. She’s holding a bouquet.

“Hi Max,” she says. “I kept wondering if I would run into you here.” She steps forward and replaces the bouquet, tucking the old one beside her as she settles in the grass next to Steve. “Hi Steve,” she says.

“Hi Nancy.” 

Nancy leans forward to look at Max, who is chewing on a strand of her hair and frowning at them both. “I’m sorry that I shot at him,” Nancy says. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t think of a way to save him.” Max stares at Nancy until her shoulders drop, and she tugs the piece of hair out of her mouth, folding herself back into Steve’s side.

“Yeah,” she says. “Me too.”

They sit there, the three of them, on the grave of a boy who helped to save them all. Steve breathes in the air, the smell of overturned soil and grass and flowers and life. He breathes.


End file.
